Pictures

You are currently browsing the archive for the Pictures category.

Saturday, 25 April 1942

25 April 2012 in 1940s, Art, Civil defence, Periodicals, Pictures, Post-blogging 1940-2 by Brett Holman | 11 comments

Daily Mirror, 25 April 1942, 1

Lots of interesting things in today's papers about the campaign in Burma, the future of India, Anzac Day, and so on -- but there's also a lot on bombing, so I'm going to talk about that. The predominant theme is, as the Daily Mirror's front page headlines above claim, that Bomber Command is now delivering exceptionally heavy blows against enemy-held cities (one, Flushing or rather Vlissingen, is actually in the Netherlands, not Germany, though the Mirror doesn't mention this):

THE RAF have opened a new era in aerial warfare. Within the past twenty-four hours they have launched the two most destructive and furious raids of the war.

While Rostock, the German Baltic supply base for the Russian front, was still burning following one hour of concentrated bombing in the early morning, Fighter Command yesterday carried out their biggest ever single offensive.

In this day attack swarms of Spitfires took a force of Boston bombers to smash the docks at Flushing.

Read the rest of this entry »

This post is part of an experiment in post-blogging the Battle of Britain, the Blitz and the Baedeker Blitz. See here for an introduction to the series.

Friday, 24 April 1942

24 April 2012 in 1940s, Periodicals, Pictures, Post-blogging 1940-2, Radio by Brett Holman | 5 comments

Yorkshire Post, 24 April 1942, 1

Yesterday's muted announcement of a British retreat in Burma is followed today by more prominent headlines of a further withdrawal, albeit this time in the Taungdwingyi sector. But while the front page of the Yorkshire Post (above) grimly declares that

OUR retirement through Central Burma is bringing us nearer the plains of Mandalay and the defence of Northern Burma

it immediately goes on to find hope in yesterday's revelation that US Army troops were already in India. It is suggested that this may in time develop into one of America's major fronts against Japan. In the meantime, though, hard fighting will be necessary to protect the Burma Road which is threatened by 'a Japanese force of tanks, guns and infantry', though on the Post's analysis this is to stop Chinese reinforcements reaching Burma rather than Allied supplies reaching China. Further withdrawals are likely British troops will likely have to fall back on Meiktila.

Present policy is to deny the enemy the high ground in the North and keep him on the lower flats until the rain breaks and floods the river valleys.

The Times notes that Japan has been aided by 'traitorous Burmese' (5) and has the advantage of being able to use two good roads from the east, whereas communications between India and Burma are poor. Still,

In difficult circumstances our troops have never weakened, whatever the strain. Whenever the call has come, fatigue has been forgotten. Gurkhas, Baluchis, Frontier Force Rifles have vied with British units in courage and resolution. No finer fighting has been seen in this war. Coolness allied with determination has extricated the force or portions of it from many ugly situations, though not always without regrettable loss in men and material.

It's probably easier to forget the fatigue of the troops in Burma from the vantage point of London than it would be on the spot!
Read the rest of this entry »

This post is part of an experiment in post-blogging the Battle of Britain, the Blitz and the Baedeker Blitz. See here for an introduction to the series.

Thursday, 23 April 1942

23 April 2012 in 1940s, Australia, Periodicals, Pictures, Post-blogging 1940-2, Radio, Rumours by Brett Holman | 4 comments

Daily Mirror, 23 April 1942, 1

Most newspapers today lead with the story of a successful Commando raid on the French coast near Boulogne early yesterday morning -- though only the Daily Mirror (above), rather bizarrely, focuses on the fact that 'All wore gym shoes' (1) (apart from the ex-Limehouse police inspector who wore slippers). More colour is provided by the dashing Lord Lovat who led the raid wearing 'the bonnet of his own Lovat Scouts, a body of Highland deerstalkers [...] whose training is ideal for Commando work'. The purpose of the raid is not clear -- the official communique only says it was a reconnaissance mission -- so it's hard to say if it achieved its objective. Perhaps the aim was to tie up German cement supplies:

SO greatly do the Germans fear Commando raids and invasion that they have earmarked more than half the French production of cement -- about one and a quarter million tons a year -- for use on new defence works along the coast.

But in purely operational terms the raid seems to have been a success (8):

Remarkable from the military point of view was that, after spending two hours on enemy-occupied territory, every man was withdrawn with arms. Our casualties were negligible.

The Navy, which delivered and retrieved the Commandos, also got away largely unscathed, and damaged two armed German trawlers in the process.
Read the rest of this entry »

This post is part of an experiment in post-blogging the Battle of Britain, the Blitz and the Baedeker Blitz. See here for an introduction to the series.

The last flight of the Patrie

19 April 2012 in 1900s, Aircraft, Maps, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Pictures, Rumours by Brett Holman | 3 comments

Patrie

The Lebaudy-built Patrie, seen above, was France's first military airship. A descendent of the Jaune, in 1906 and 1907 it carried out a number of successful proving and publicity flights, including one where it carried the prime minister, Georges Clemenceau, over Paris. Afterwards it was moved to its operational base near the fortress of Verdun. Due to a mechanical failure during a subsequent flight it had to ground in the open, far from the safety of its hangar. A gale blew up, and even one hundred and eighty soldiers were unable to hold the stricken airship down. At 8pm on 30 November 1907, the Patrie floated off into the distance, fortunately sans crew.
Read the rest of this entry »

Future schemes of air defence

6 April 2012 in 1930s, Air defence, Aircraft, Art, Civil defence, Nuclear, biological, chemical, Periodicals, Pictures by Brett Holman | No comments

Future schemes of air defence

MONSTER EAR TRUMPETS FOR AIR DEFENCE

During the last years of the Great War, sound detectors played an increasingly important part in the air defences of all the belligerents. Since those days they have undergone great development. Here the emperor of Japan is inspecting the huge trumpet-like detectors that work in conjunction with the anti-aircraft guns (seen right)

This last in a series on 'Things of tomorrow' draws upon Boyd Cable, 'Future schemes of air defence', in John Hammerton, ed., War in the Air: Aerial Wonders of our Time (London: Amalgamated Press, n.d. [1936]), 310-6. (There was a seventh in the series, but by another author and on a non-military subject, that of stratospheric flight.) The previous posts looked at 'Death from the skies', 'The doom of cities', 'New horrors of air attack', 'If war should come' and 'When war does come: terrifying effects of gas attacks'.
Read the rest of this entry »

As it was

24 March 2012 in 1940s, After 1950, Archives, Australia, Books, Cold War, Nuclear, biological, chemical, Pictures by Brett Holman | 19 comments

Essen, after 5/6 March 1943

Don Charlwood's No Moon Tonight has a reputation as one of the best Bomber Command memoirs. Charlwood was a Victorian who joined the RAAF in 1941, trained as a navigator in Canada under the Empire Air Training Scheme, and then flew in Halifaxes and Lancasters with 103 Squadron at Elsham Wolds. Having survived his tour of 30 ops in 1942 and 1943, he stayed in aviation after the war, albeit on the ground as a civil air traffic controller. No Moon Tonight was originally published in 1956 and was the first of more than a dozen books by Charlwood, some memoirs, some aviation history, some Victorian history. In 1986 he wrote that the book was 'kindly received both in Australia and Britain', and that 'letters from ex-aircrew men of various nationalities began to tell me I had not been alone in my response to the Bomber Command experience'. It's one aspect of that response I'm interested in here: his feelings about the morality of area bombing.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Yellow

21 March 2012 in 1900s, Aircraft, Pictures by Brett Holman | 4 comments

Le Jaune airship, 1903

Paris, 20 November 1903: the ghostly form of an airship floats past an equally ghostly Eiffel Tower, before a very solid crowd of completely entranced spectators. It is Le Jaune, 'The Yellow', the first of the successful Lebaudy series of French semi-rigid airships.

The source of this photograph is a postcard sent to me by JDK (cheers!) I couldn't find a copy online so decided to post it here. There is, however, a very similar photograph on the Air & Space Magazine site which must have been taken just moments before and from almost exactly the same angle. It's also much clearer if you like that sort of thing.

When war does come

20 March 2012 in 1910s, 1930s, Art, Civil defence, Nuclear, biological, chemical, Periodicals, Pictures by Brett Holman | No comments

When war does come

FORETASTE OF THE FUTURE

Of all the forms of gas used in the Great War, that which had the least disastrous consequences was "tear gas." Its effect was to inflict temporary blindness on those who came in contact with it. This pathetic row of figures show men temporarily blinded in that way on the Western Front in April, 1918. Affecting as this scene is, the results of the deadly gases of today would be infinitely worse.

Another batch of photographs of 'Things of tomorrow'. After 'Death from the skies', 'The doom of cities', 'New horrors of air attack', and 'If war should come', there followed (and note the shift from the indefinite to the definite) Boyd Cable, 'When war does come: terrifying effects of gas attacks', in John Hammerton, ed., War in the Air: Aerial Wonders of our Time (London: Amalgamated Press, n.d. [1936]), 272-4.
Read the rest of this entry »

Smithy and the mystery aeroplane

8 March 2012 in 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, Aircraft, Archives, Australia, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Pictures by Brett Holman | 3 comments

Charles Kingsford Smith

Charles Kingsford Smith was and remains Australia's most famous pioneer aviator. Among his feats: the first trans-Pacific flight, in both directions in fact (1928, east to west; 1934, west to east); the first non-stop trans-Australian flight (1928); the first trans-Tasman flight (1928). It's probably fair to think of him as the Australian Lindbergh in terms of his iconic status -- and his flirtation with far-right politics (he was a member of the New Guard, an early 1930s fascist paramilitary group) -- though his entrepeneurial activties and self-promotion remind me more of Sir Alan Cobham, with his ambitious attempt (with his frequent copilot, Charles Ulm) to get into the airline business. 'Smithy' was himself knighted, in 1932; in 1953 Sydney's major airport (and hence Australia's busiest) was named after him; for thirty years his image graced the Australian twenty dollar note. Like so many of the great pioneer aviators he met an early death, in his case in November 1935 after crashing somewhere in the Andaman Sea while trying to recapture the Australia-England speed record.

All of that is well-known. But what isn't is that in 1918, Kingsford Smith witnessed a mystery aeroplane flying over the Australian coast -- what in later decades would be called a flying saucer or an unidentified flying object. I can find no reference to this incident in a quick check of three Smithy biographies (admittedly none very scholarly); as it's buried in an archive with no obvious connection to his career it's possible it hasn't been noticed before now.
Read the rest of this entry »

If war should come

7 March 2012 in 1930s, Books, Civil defence, Nuclear, biological, chemical, Periodicals, Pictures by Brett Holman | No comments

If war should come

WILL THEY BE A COMMON SIGHT?

Officers of the St. Johns Ambulance Brigade, who, in their black and white uniforms, are familiar and friendly figures to Londoners, are now preparing for the possibility that grim and terrible duties may one day fall to their lot. A number of them have recently received instruction in a hall beneath one of London's biggest blocks of flats in methods of first aid in the streets, in the use of shelters and airlocks and the gas-proofing of private premises. A group of them is here seen clothed from head to foot in anti-gas equipment

These photographs are from the fourth of a series of articles on the future of aerial warfare: Boyd Cable, 'If war should come', in John Hammerton, ed., War in the Air: Aerial Wonders of our Time (London: Amalgamated Press, n.d. [1936]), 201-4. The preceding articles were 'Death from the skies', 'The doom of cities', and 'New horrors of air attack'.
Read the rest of this entry »

« Older entries § Newer entries »